On the Meaning of the
Formula πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι
οὐκ ἦν, in the
Nicene Anathema.

It was observed on p.
75, note 4(b), that there were two clauses in the Nicene Anathema which
required explanation. One of them, ἐξ ἑτέρας
ὑποστάσεως ἢ
οὐσίας, has been discussed in
the Excursus, pp. 77–82; the other, πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι
οὐκ ἦν, shall be considered now.

Bishop Bull has suggested a very ingenious
interpretation of it, which is not obvious, but which, when stated, has
much plausibility, as going to explain, or rather to sanction, certain
modes of speech in some early Fathers of venerable authority, which
have been urged by heterodox writers, and given up by Catholics of the
Roman School, as savouring of Arianism. The foregoing pages have made
it abundantly evident that the point of controversy between Catholics
and Arians was, not whether our Lord was God, but whether He was Son of
God; the solution of the former question being involved in that of the
latter. The Arians maintained that the very word ‘Son’
implied a ‘beginning,’ or that our Lord was not Very God;
the Catholics said that it implied ‘connaturality,’ or that
He was Very God as one with God. Now five early writers, Athenagoras,
Tatian, Theophilus, Hippolytus, and Novatian, of whom the authority of
Hippolytus is very great, not to speak of Theophilus and Athenagoras,
whatever be thought of Tatian and of Novatian, seem to speak of the
divine generation as taking place immediately before the creation of
the world, that is, as if not eternal, though 344at the same time they teach that our Lord
existed before that generation. In other words they seem to teach that
He was the Word from eternity, and became the Son at the beginning of
all things; some of them expressly considering Him, first as the λόγος
ἐνδιάθετος,
or Reason, in the Father, or (as may be speciously represented) a mere
attribute; next, as the λόγος
προφορικὸς,
or Word, terms which are explained, note on de Syn. 26 (5). This
doctrine, when divested of figure and put into literal statement, might
appear nothing more or less than this,—that at the beginning of
the world the Son was created after the likeness of the Divine
attribute of Reason, as its image or expression, and thereby became the
Divine Word, was made the instrument of creation, called the Son from
that ineffable favour and adoption which God had bestowed on Him, and
in due time sent into the world to manifest God’s perfections to
mankind;—which, it is scarcely necessary to say, is the doctrine
of Arianism.

Bishop Bull, Defens. F. N. iii. 5–8,
meets this representation by maintaining that the γέννησις which S.
Hippolytus and other writers spoke of, was but a metaphorical
generation, the real and eternal truth being shadowed out by a
succession of events in the economy of time, such as is the
Resurrection (Acts xiii.
33), nay, the Nativity; and
that of these His going forth to create the worlds was one. And he
maintains (ibid. iii. 9)
that such is the mode of speaking adopted by the Fathers after the
Nicene Council as well as before. And then he adds (which is our
present point), that it is even alluded to and recognised in the Creed
of the Council, which anathematizes those who say that ‘the Son
was not before His generation,’ i.e. who deny that ‘the Son
was before His generation,’ which statement
accordingly becomes indirectly a Catholic truth.

I am not aware whether any writer has preceded or
followed this great authority in this view22092209 Waterland expresses the view here taken, and not Bishop
Bull’s; vol. i. p. 114. Bull’s language, on the other hand,
is very strong: ‘Sæpe olim, ut verum ingenue fateai, animum
meum subiit admiratio, quid effato isto, ‘Filius priusquam
nasceretur, non erat,’ sibi voluerint Ariani. De
nativitate Christi ex beatissima Virgine dictum non esse exponendum
constat.…Itaque de nativitate Filii loquuntur, quæ hujus
universi creationem antecessit. Quis vero, inquam, sensus
dicti hujus “Filius non erat, sive non existebat, priusquam
nasceretur ex Patre ante conditum mundum?” Ego sane nullus
dubito, quin hoc pronunciatum Arianorum oppositum fuerit Catholicorum
istorum sententiæ, qui docerent, Filium quidem paulo ante conditum
mundum inexplicabili quodam modo ex Patre progressum fuisse ad
constituendum universa, &c. D. F. N. iii. 9.
§2..
The more obvious mode of understanding the Arian formula is this, that
it is an argument ex absurdo, drawn from the force of the word
Son, in behalf of the Arian doctrine; it being, as they would say, a
truism, that, ‘whereas He was begotten, He was not before
He was begotten,’ and the denial of it a contradiction in terms.
This certainly does seem to myself the true force of the formula; so
much so, that if Bishop Bull’s explanation be admissible, it
must, in order to its being so, first be shewn to be reducible to this
sense, and to be included under it.

The point at issue between the two
interpretations is this; whether the clause πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι
οὐκ ἦν is intended for a
denial of the contrary proposition, ‘He was before
His generation,’ as Bishop Bull says; or whether it is what
Aristotle calls an enthymematic sentence, assuming the falsity,
as confessed on all hands, of that contrary proposition, as
self-contradictory, and directly denying, not it, but ‘He was
from everlasting.’ Or, in other words, whether it opposes the
position of the five writers, or the great Catholic doctrine itself;
and whether in consequence the Nicene Fathers are in their anathema
indirectly sanctioning that position, or stating that doctrine. Bull
considers that both sides contemplated the proposition,
‘He was before His generation,’—and that the
Catholics asserted or defended it; some reasons shall here be given for
the contrary view.

1. Now first, let me repeat, what was just now
observed by the way, that the formula in question, when taken as an
enthymematic sentence, or reductio ad absurdum, exactly
expresses the main argument of the Arians, which they brought forward
in so many shapes, as feeling that their cause turned upon it,
‘He is a son, therefore He had a beginning.’ Thus
Socrates records Arius’s words in the beginning of the
controversy, (1) ‘If the Father begat the Son, He who is begotten
has a beginning of existence; (2) therefore once the Son was not, ἦν ὅτε
οὐκ ἦν; (3) therefore He has His
subsistence from nothing, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων
ἔχει τὴν
ὑπόστασιν.’
H. E. i. 5. The first of these propositions exactly answers to
the οὐκ ἦν
πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι
taken enthymematically; and it may be added that when so taken, the
three propositions will just answer to the three first formulæ
anathematized at Nicæa, two of which are indisputably the same as
two of them; viz. ὅτι ἦν ποτὲ 345δτε
οὐκ ἦν· & 234·τι
πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι
οὐκ ἦν· & 234·τι
ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων
ἐγένετο. On the other hand,
we hear nothing in the controversy of the position which Bull conceives
to be opposed by Arius (‘He was before His generation’),
that is, supposing the formula in question does not allude to it;
unless indeed it is worth while to except the statement reprobated in
the Letter of the Arians to Alexander, ὄντα
πρότερον,
γεννηθέντα
εἰς υἱ& 231·ν, which is
explained, de Syn. 16. note 12.

2. Next, it should be observed that the other
formulæ here, as elsewhere, mentioned, are enthymematic also, or
carry their argument with them, and that, an argument resolvable often
into the original argument derived from the word ‘Son.’
Such are ὁ ὢν
τὸν μὴ ὄντα
ἐκ τοῦ ὄντος
ἢ τὸν ὄντα; and ἓν τὸ
ἀγένητον ἢ
δύο; and in like manner as regards the question
of the τρεπτόν; ‘Has He
free will’ (thus Athanasius states the Arian objection) ‘or
has He not? is He good from choice according to free will, and can He,
if He will, alter, being of an alterable nature? as wood or stone, has
He not His choice free to be moved, and incline hither and
thither?’ supr. §35. That is, they wished the word τρεπτὸς to carry
with it its own self-evident application to our Lord, with the
alternative of an absurdity; and so to prove His created nature.

3. In §32, S. Athanasius observes that the
formula of the ἀγένητον was the later
substitute for the original formulæ of Arius; ‘when they
were no longer allowed to say, “out of nothing,” and
“He was not before His generation,”’ they hit upon
this word Unoriginate, that, by saying among the simple that the Son
was originate, they might imply the very same phrases “out
of nothing” and “He once was not.” Here he does not
in so many words say that the argument from the ἀγένητον was a
substitute for the οὐκ
ἦν πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι,
yet surely it is not unfair so to understand him. But it is plain that
the ἀγένητον was brought
forward merely to express by an appeal to philosophy and earlier
Fathers, that to be a Son was to have a beginning and a creation, and
not to be God. This therefore will be the sense of the οὐκ ἦν πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι.
Nay, when the Arians asked, ‘Is the ἀγένητον one or
two,’ they actually did assume that it was granted by their
opponents that the Father only was ἀγένητος; which it
was not, if the latter held, nay, if they had sanctioned at Nicæa,
as Bull says, that our Lord ἦν πρὶν
γεννηθῇ; and moreover which
they knew and confessed was not granted, if their own formula οὐκ ἦν πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι
was directed against this statement.

4. Again, it is plain that the οὐκ ἦν πρίν
γεννηθῆναι is
used by S. Athanasius as the same objection with ὁ ὢν τὸν
μὴ ὄντα ἐκ
τοῦ ὄντος, &c.
E.g. he says, ‘We might ask them in turn, God who is, has He so
become, whereas He was not?’ or is He also before His
generation? whereas He is, did He make Himself, or is He of nothing.
&c., §25. Now the ὁ ὢν τὸν μὴ
ὄντα, &c., is evidently an
argument, and that, grounded on the absurdity of saying ὁ ὢν
τὸν ὄντα. S.
Alexander’s Encyclical Letter (vid. Socr. i. 6), compared with
Arius’s original positions and the Nicene Anathemas as referred
to above, is a strong confirmation. In these three documents the
formulæ agree together, except one; and that one, which in
Arius’s language is ‘he who is begotten has a beginning of
existence,’ is in the Nicene Anathema, οὐκ ἦν πρὶν
γεννηθῆναι,
but in S. Alexander’s circular, ὁ
ὢν θεὸς
τὸν μὴ ὄντα
ἐκ τοῦ μὴ
ὄντος
πεποίηκεν. The
absence of the οὐκ ἦν
πρὶν, &c., in S. Alexander is certainly
remarkable. Moreover the two formulæ are treated as synonymous by
Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 9. Cyril, Thesaur. 4. p. 29 fin.,
and by Basil as quoted below. But indeed there is an internal
correspondence between them, shewing that they have but one meaning.
They are really but the same sentence in the active and in the passive
voice.

5. A number of scattered passages in Athanasius
lead us to the same conclusion. For instance, if the Arian formula had
the sense which is here maintained, of being an argument against our
Lord’s eternity, the Catholic answer would be, ‘He could
not be before His generation because His generation is
eternal, as being from the Father.’ Now this is precisely
the language Athanasius uses, when it occurs to him to introduce the
words in question. Thus in Orat. ii. §57 he says,
‘The creatures began to come to be (γίνεσθαι); but the
Word of God, not having beginning (ἀρχὴν) of being, surely did not
begin to be, nor begin to come to be, but was always. And the works
have a beginning (ἀρχὴν) in the making, and the beginning
precedes things which come to be; but the Word not being of such,
rather Himself becomes the Framer of those things which have a
beginning. And the being of things originate is measured by their
becoming (ἐν
τῷ
γίνεσθαι), and at some
beginning (origin) doth God begin to make them through the Word, that
it may be known that they were not before their origination (πρίν
γενέσθαι); but the Word
hath His being in no other origin than the Father (vid. supr. §11,
note 1), ‘whom they themselves allow to be unoriginate, so that
He too exists unoriginately in the Father, being His offspring not His
creature.’ We shall find that other Fathers say just the same.
Again, we have already come to a passage where for ‘His
generation,’ he substitutes ‘making,’ a word which
Bull would not say that either the Nicene Council or S. Hippolytus
would use; clearly shewing that the Arians were not quoting and denying
a Catholic statement in the οὐκ
ἦν πρὶν, &c., but laying
down one of their own. ‘Who is there in all mankind, Greek or
Barbarian, who ventures to rank among creatures One whom he confesses
the while to be God, and says that “He was not ‘before He
was made,’ πρὶν
ποιηθῇ.”’
Orat. i. §10. Arius, who is surely the best explainer of
his own words, says the same; that is, he interprets
‘generation’ by ‘making,’ or confesses that he
is bringing forward an argument, not opposing a dogma; ‘Before
His generation,’ he says, ‘or creation, or
destination (ὁρισθῇ), Rom. i. 4), or founding (vid. Prov. viii. 23), He was not; for He was not
ingenerate.’ Theod., Hist. i. 4. Eusebius of Nicomedia
also, in a passage which has already come before us, says distinctly,
‘“It is plain to any one,” that what has been made
was not before its generation; but what came to be has an origin
of being.’ De Syn. §17.

6. If there are passages in Athanasius which seem
to favour the opposite interpretation, that is, to imply that the
Catholics held or allowed, as Bp. Bull considers, that ‘before
His generation, He was,’ they admit of an explanation. E.g.
“How is He not in the number of the creatures, if, as they say,
He was not before His generation? for it is proper to the creatures and
works, not to be before their generation.’ Orat. ii.
§22. This might be taken to imply that the Arians said, ‘He
was not,’ and Catholics ‘He was.’ But the real
meaning is this, ‘How is He not a creature, if the formula be
true, which they use, “He was not before His
generation?” for it may indeed properly be said of
creatures that “they were not before their
generation.”’ And so again when he says, ‘if the Son
was not before His generation, Truth was not always in God,’
supr. §20, he does not thereby imply that the Son was
before His generation, but he means, ‘if it be true that,
&c.,’ ‘if the formula holds,’ ‘if it
can be said of the Son, “He was not, &c.”’
Accordingly, shortly afterwards, in a passage already cited, he says
the same of the Almighty Father in the way of parallel; ‘God who
is, hath He so become, whereas He was not, or “is He too before
His generation?”’ (§25), not implying here any
generation at all, but urging 346that
the question is idle and irrelevant, that the formula is
unmeaning and does not apply to, cannot be said
of, Father or Son.

7. Such an explanation of these passages, as well
as the view here taken of the formula itself, receive abundant
confirmation from S. Gregory Nazianzen and S. Hilary. What has been
maintained is, that when S. Athanasius says, ‘if the Son
is not before His generation, then, &c.,’ he does but
mean, ‘if it can be said,’ ‘if the words can
be used or applied in this case.’ Now the two Fathers just
mentioned both decide that it is not true, either that the Son
was before His generation, or that He was not; in other
words, that the question is unmeaning and irrelevant, which is just the
interpretation which has been here given to Athanasius. But again, in
thus speaking, they thereby assert also that they did not hold,
that they do not allow, that formula which Bull considers the
Nicene Fathers defended and sanctioned, as being Catholic and in use
both before the Council and after, viz. ‘He was before His
generation.’ Thus S. Gregory in the passage in which he speaks of
‘did He that is make Him that is not, &c.,’ and
‘before His generation, &c.,’ as one and the same,
expressly says, ‘In His case, to be begotten is concurrent
with existence and is from the beginning,’ and that in
contrast to the instance of men; who he says, do fulfil in a manner
‘He who is, &c.’ (Levi being in the loins of Abraham),
i.e. fulfil Bull’s proposition, ‘He was before
generation.’ He proceeds, ‘I say that the question is
irrelevant, not the answer difficult.’ And presently after,
mentioning some idle inquiries by way of parallel, he adds, ‘more
ill-instructed, be sure, is it to decide whether what was generated
from the beginning was or was not before generation,
πρὸ τῆς
γεννήσεως.’
Orat. 29. 9.

9. It may seem superfluous to proceed, but as
Bishop Bull is an authority not lightly to be set aside, a passage from
S. Basil shall be added. Eunomius objects, ‘God begat the Son
either being or not being, &c.…to him that is, there needs
not generation.’ He replies that Eunomius, ‘because
animals first are not, and then are generated, and he who is born
to-day, yesterday did not exist, transfers this conception to
the subsistence of the Only-begotten; and says, since He has
been generated, He was not before His generation, πρὸ τῆς
γεννήσεως,’
contr. Eunom. ii. 14. And he solves the objection as the other
Fathers, by saying that our Lord is from everlasting, speaking of S.
John, in the first words of his Gospel, as τῇ ἀ&
187·διότητι
τοῦ πατρὸς
τοῦ
μονογενοῦς
συνάπτων τὴν
γέννησιν. §15.

These then being the explanations which the
contemporary and next following Fathers give of the Arian formula which
was anathematized at Nicæa, it must be observed that the line of
argument which Bishop Bull is pursuing, does not lead him to assign any
direct reasons for the substitution of a different interpretation in
their place. He is engaged, not in commenting on the Nicene Anathema,
but in proving that the Post-Nicene Fathers admitted that view or
statement of doctrine which he conceives also implied in that
anathema; and thus the sense of the anathema, instead of being the
subject of proof, is, as he believes, one of the proofs of the point
which he is establishing. However, since these other collateral
evidences which he adduces, may be taken to be some sort of indirect
comment upon the words of the Anathema, the principal of them in point
of authority, and that which most concerns us, shall here be noticed:
it is a passage from the second Oration of Athanasius.

While commenting on the words, ἀρχὴ
ὁδῶν εἰς τὰ
ἔργα in the text, ‘The Lord has
created me the beginning of His ways unto the works,’ S.
Athanasius is led to consider the text ‘first born of every
creature,’ πρωτότοκος
πασῆς
κτίσεως: and he says that He
who was μονογενὴς
from eternity, became by a συγκατάβασις
at the creation of the world πρωτότοκος.
This doctrine Bp. Bull considers declaratory of a going forth, προέλευσις,
or figurative birth from the Father, at the beginning of all
things.

It will be observed that the very point to be
proved is this, viz. not that there was a συγκατάβασις
merely, but that according to Athanasius there was a γέννησις or
proceeding from the Father, and that the word πρωτότοκος
marks it. Bull’s words are, that ‘Catholici quidam
Doctores, qui post exortam controversiam Arianam vixerunt,…illam
τοῦ
λόγου.…ex Patre
progressionem (quod et συγκατάβασιν,
hoc est, condescensionem eorum nonnulli appellarunt), ad condendum
hæc universa agnovere; atque ejus etiam progressionis
respectu ipsum τὸν
λόγον a Deo Patre quasi
natum fuisse et omnis creaturæ primogenitum in
Scripturis dici confessi sunt.’ D. F. N. iii. 9. §1.
Now I consider that S. Athanasius does not, as this sentence says,
understand by primogenitus that our Lord was ‘progressionis
respectu a Deo Patre quasi natus.’ He 347does not seem to me to speak of a generation or
birth of the Son at all, though figurative, but of the birth of all
things, and that in Him.

That Athanasius does not call the συγκατάβασις
of the Word a birth, as denoted by the term πρωτότοκος,
is plain from his own avowal in the passage to which Bull refers.
‘Nowhere in the Scriptures,’ he says, ‘is He called
πρωτότοκος
τοῦ Θεοῦ, first-born of
God, nor creature of God, but Only-begotten, Word, Wisdom, have
their relation to the Father, and are proper to Him.’ ii. 62.
Here surely he expressly denies Bull’s statement that
‘first-born’ means ‘a Deo natus,’ ‘born
of God.’ Such additions as παρὰ τοῦ
πατρὸς, he says, are reserved for
μονογενὴς and
λόγος.

He goes on to say what the term πρωτότοκος
does mean; viz. instead of having any reference to a προέλευσις
from the Father, it refers solely to the creatures; our Lord is not
called πρωτότοκος,
because His προέλευσις
is a ‘type of His eternal generation,’ but because by that
προέλευσις
He became the ‘Prototype of all creation.’ He, as it were,
stamped His image, His Sonship, upon creation, and became the
first-born in the sense of being the Archetypal Son. If this is borne
out by the passage, Athanasius, it is plain, does not speak of any
γέννησις whatever
at the era of creation, though figurative; πρωτότοκος
does but mean μονογενὴς
πρωτεύων ἐν
τῇ κτίσει, or ἀρχὴ
τῆς κτίσεως,
or πρωτότυπον
γέννημα, or μόνος
γεννητὸς ἐν
τοῖς
γενητοῖς; and no
warrant is given, however indirect, to the idea that in the Nicene
Anathema, the Fathers implied an allowance of the proposition,
‘He was before His generation.’

As the whole passage occurs in the Discourse
which immediately follows, it is not necessary to enter formally into
the proof of this view of it, when the reader will soon be able to
judge of it for himself. But it may be well to add two passages, one
from Athenagoras, the other from S. Cyril, not in elucidation of the
words of Athanasius, but of the meaning which I would put upon
them.

The passage from Athenagoras is quoted by Bull
himself, who of course is far from denying the doctrine of our
Lord’s Archetypal office; and does but wish in addition to find
in Athanasius the doctrine of a γέννησις.
Athenagoras says that the Son is ‘the first offspring, πρῶτον
γέννημα, of the Father, not
as come to be, γενόμενον
(for God being Eternal Mind had from the beginning in Himself the Word,
as having Reason eternally, λογικὸς ὢν),
but that while as regards matter heavy and light were mixed
together’ (the passage is corrupt here), ‘He went forth,
προελθὼν, as an
idea and energy’, i.e. as an Agent to create, and a
Form and Rule to create by. And then he goes on to quote the very text
on which Athanasius is employed when he explains πρωτότοκος.
‘And the Prophetic Spirit confirms this doctrine, saying, The
Lord hath created me a beginning (origin) of His ways, for His
works.’ Leg. 10.

And so S. Cyril, ‘He is Only-begotten
according to nature, as being alone from the Father, God from God,
Light kindled from Light; and He is First-born for our sakes, that,
as if to some immortal root the whole creation might be
ingrafted and might bud forth from the Everlasting. For all things were
made by Him, and consist for ever and are preserved in
Him.’ Thesaur. 25 p. 238.

In conclusion it may be suggested whether the
same explanation which has here been given of Athanasius’s use of
πρωτότοκος
does not avail more exactly to the defence of two of the five writers
from the charge of inaccurate doctrine, than that which Bull has
preferred.

As to Athenagoras, we have already seen that he
does not speak of a γέννησις at all in
his account of creation, but simply calls the Son πρῶτον
γέννημα, i.e. πρωτότυπον
γέννημα.

Nor does Tatian approach nearer to the doctrine
of a γέννησις. He says
that at the creation the Word ἔργον
πρωτότοκον
τοῦ πατρὸς
γίνεται.
τοῦτον ἴσμεν
τοῦ κόσμου
τὴν ἀρχήν. ad
Græc. 5. Here the word ἔργον, which at first sight
promises a difficulty, does in fact explain both himself and
Athenagoras. He says that at creation the Word became, γίνεται, not a
Son (figuratively), as Bull would grant to the parties whom he
is opposing, but a work. It was His great condescension, συγκατάβασις,
to be accounted the first of the works, as being their type;
that as they were to be raised to an adoption and called sons,
so He for that purpose might stoop to creation, and be called a
work. As Tatian uses the word ἀρχὴ in the concluding clause, there is
great reason to think that he is alluding to the very text which
Athanasius and Athenagoras expressly quote, in which Wisdom is said to
be ‘created a beginning, ἀρχὴ, of ways, unto the works,
εἰς τὰ
ἔργα.’

As to Novatian, Bishop Bull himself observes that
it is a question whether he need be understood to speak of any
generation but that which is eternal; nor does Pamelius otherwise
explain him.